Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot, cooking and eating in northwest England)
1
In this house, we define the “season” as being from whenever we put the Xmas tree up until New Years Day. Like most folk, we have our traditions for the Xmas Day meal but what about the other days. Does the feasting stretch out beyond the day itself or do you have “normal” food before and after Xmas (excluding using leftovers, of course). We’re going away for a few days over Christmas (nice hotel in the country, log fires and the like).
That means we’ll have no Harters family traditions to draw on and we look to trying some new dishes to make for an extended feast. Which is where you guys come in. What are your favourite winter dishes - simple but really tasty midweek meals, together with those that are a bit more elaborate.
We’ve got some things pencilled in - several desserts, beef sirloin joint (I see this for New Years Eve), a ham of course, beef, chestnut and mushroom stew and a giant “sausage roll” ( that should work cold as well as hot, so ideal for a lunch)
A chicken paprikash over noodles, or a hearty French country stew with chicken. David Leite from Leite’s Culinaria has a wonderful-sounding version of a French country stew.
Maybe a coq au vin with non-alcoholic wine and brandy (if the latter exists?)
A lamb tagine would be a nice meal, if you and Mrs. H like sweet with meat.
I love trying traditional dishes from various cultures during the holidays, so that influences some of our dinners.
St Lucy Day is Dec 16th. The 2 regions that celebrate St Lucy in a big way are Sweden and Sicily. In Italy, it’s traditional to eat wheat berries in a soup or in a sweet pudding. I think I will make a wheatberry soup this year. I may make Swedish saffron lussekatter buns, a sweet bun, that way, as well.
Dec 23rd, one friend throws a Festivas party, so that usually means my dinner is made up of appetizers and cookies that night
I only recently heard about Newfies celebrating Tibbs Eve on Dec 23rd. Tibbs Eve typically involves a lot of drinking, and the food is mostly simple appetizers like cold cuts and cheese.
I might make a Jiggs Dinner, a Newfie boiled dinner, which 8 have read about, but I have not tried. Not that it’s a Tibbs Eve tradition, just to make something from Newfoundland that I have not made before.
On Xmas Eve, I always make seafood. Sometimes I look at southern Italy for inspiration through the feast of the 7 fishes, sometimes I go in a more Galizien Polish Ukrainian direction with many vegetarian dishes, other times I make Moqueca or Oysters Rockefeller.
Xmas dinner is roast goose or duck, and spanakopita.
Boxing day dinner is leftovers.
I don’t have a special plan for Dec 27th-Dec 30th, other than I often make dishes with the cheese we received. Cauliflower Cheese or Macaroni and Cheese, mostly.
Dec 31st, my DCs used to go to a restaurant with their friends until Dec 2020, when the pandemic made us homebodies. I would either go out with friends, or eat take-out at home and hang out with my dogs. I think my DCs might go to a house party and my NYE plans have not been set yet. My DCs and I went to a house party last NYE, and the hosts served Ina Garten’s Bouef Bourguignon.
Jan 1st, I now make a fancy dinner with a few lucky New Year
r foods. I might make a Beef Wellington or Coulibiac this year.
We usually go the seafood route if it’s just the two of us — think crab salad, shrimp cocktail, gravlax… that kinda ish.
We have two duck breasts in the freezer that might make an appearance, unless I make them before the holidays, and now that we pivoted from turkey on turkey day to youvetsi, it might even be a big boyd. We’d have company for that, tho.
Maybe roasted Cornish game hens for each of you? No fuss & delish.
At the ricepad pad, we only have two traditions for the holiday season. On Christmas day, we always have rouladen, one of Mrs. ricepad’s family traditions that we have continued. I have since learned that rouladen are not really a traditional German Christmas meal, but have become traditional among German Americans.
The second is Oshogatsu, or the traditional Japanese open house observance of the coming of the new year. I don’t generally prepare traditional dishes for oshogatsu, but we invite family and friends for a buffet table that includes a lot of Japanese foods - sushi (real, not Monster Truck rolls), various pickles, nishime, etc.
There’s a second set of foods that I’ll frequently make during this period, but it’s mostly because the Spawns are home and I prepare things they consider comfort foods from their childhoods, so not tied to a holiday at all, but just because they’re home.
Hopefully, I’ll find one on sale/clearance. I do have an “emergency” small chunk of ham in the freezer, so if I can’t find anything – we’ll have that. The portions will be small, but we will have some ham.
Just like my small turkey (Thanksgiving), I prepare the ham in my large slow cooker/crock pot.
Wow, ya got me! I have no idea. Mrs. ricepad’s mother grew up in northern Germany kind of between Bremerhaven and Hamburg. The recipe we use calls for a thin slab of beef (I usually order either top or bottom round), and filled with bacon and onions. I tried a pickle spear one year and was figuratively kicked in the shins for not hewing to the family recipe, although I know it’s a traditional inclusion in some parts. Personally, I think it’s a waste of good beef, but it’s a cherished childhood meal for Mrs. ricepad, so I make it. It also happens to be one of Spawn1’s comfort foods, and since his birthday is just after New Year’s, I get a two-fer out of one ginormous batch!
The oldest grandie declared that Christmas will be clam chowder, Caesar salad and garlic bread. I make a fab clam chowder, it will be a challenge a bit this year because dear dotter cannot have any potato. I can do it. Caesar salad will have a few bits of dino kale in there.
Hmm. Well, Spawn2 particularly loves tomato beef chow mein, which is basically a Chinese American take on spaghetti. A couple of years ago, they said that TBCM is the ‘taste of summer’, because I have only used home grown tomatoes in it, and every summer we freeze boxes of tomatoes to use throughout the year for TBCM. I already mentioned Spawn1’s feelings for rouladen. Both like Mrs. ricepad’s meatloaf. Sushi. Jook. Spam, creamed corn, rice, and a fried egg. Shabu shabu. And we try to work in a meal out for dim sum, too.
My MIL only made it at Christmas, so it became a de facto holiday meal. I suspect it was a Christmas thing because she was a working mom whose husband was (still is) worthless in the kitchen and she rarely had the time to assemble all those rolls for a dinner that was not a special occasion. Not until Mrs. ricepad and her brother were pre-teens could they help her, so she had over a decade for them to become ‘traditional’.
It’s funny, though: We had Mrs. ricepad’s parents over for Christmas dinner the year I included a pickle spear in about half of them. Mrs. ricepad was pretty vehement that “pickles aren’t traditional!”, until her mom said, “Yes, a lot of people put them in, but [somebody, I forget who] didn’t like them so I never put them in.”
I have gotten into disagreements with other Greeks over the years because they have thought their family recipe was Gospel, not knowing that there are many variations among families and among regions.
People get their feathers ruffled over the ratio of butter : flour : sugar : nuts in kourabiedes, too.
I have been corrected more than a few times when I’ve thought something was traditional or standard, not knowing that what I might know is just the tip of the iceberg.
When we have had beef for dinner on Xmas day, it’s usually been Beef Wellington or Beef Tenderloin.
I apparently ordered Beef Rouladen at a restaurant on Dec 23, 2019. I can’t remember where I ordered it. It’s pretty hard to find on a resto menu in Ontario lately.
I realize this would increase the workload, but maybe you can have a white (New England) chowder and a red (Manhattan) chowder, and leave potatoes out of the red? I can’t imagine a white chowder without potatoes, but there’s so much going on in a red chowder that omitting potatoes shouldn’t be a problem.
